Conolly's Plot (Malappuram - Kerala)

Ofcourse, I would have ventured to a couple of places, though I relaxed at Spices Resort. One of it was Conolly's Plot. This entire property was developed during the British Raj in India from 1841-55.

The then collector of Malabar, Mr.H.V.Conolly ordered this and the place was names after him and Sri.Chathu Menon made this happen. The entire place was a whooping 1500 acres originally, making this the biggest man made forest and oldest manmade teak plantation.

About 1.5km from the entrance is the Chaliyar river and to cross it, is a hanging bridge of 140 ft length! Its a suspension bridge with iron holding and concrete base. At a time it can withstand 20 people. A safety instruction board there clearly says, that the bridge is meant only for walking, not for running or jumping!

Teak gets its name from Tectona Grandis which means, Carpenter's Joy since it does not get affected by rust etc. So it was used a lot for ship building in British era.

By 1933, a plot of 14.8 acres was protected and names Conolly Plot! During the 2nd world war in 1943, many of these trees were chopped from 9.1 acres, for wood to make guns. Whatever is remaining has been protected and is now under the control of forest department. Presently 5.675 acres still survive.

The trees here are numbered and the their girth has been measured. Presently 117 trees are surviving, with the biggest one measuring 42.9cm circumference and 49.2m height. 2 very tall people could touch the tips of their fingers around the tree. I couldn't ever cover half.

Apart from these there also several other trees within this premises. I dunno what this tree is, but this was the biggest!

Btw, there's a small shop of the forest dept here. Your must buys from here are bamboo rice (no, this is not the Chinese sticky rice, which is cooked inside bamboo, this is the grains of the bamboo itself!) and Asparagus pickle! The pickle is way too yummy!!!

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All the post titles are suffixed with the Name of the District. Sometimes the nearest town might be something else, though the denoted dt. might be different. For eg., Mahabalipuram is no where near Kanchipuram town, but nearer to Chennai. Yet, Mahabalipuram is under Kanchipuram dt.